#Sharks 🦈🦈🦈

[xtruss]

15 Riveting Images From The 2025 UN World Oceans Day Photo Competition

'The Ocean Is The Source of All Life And That Everything In Nature Is Deeply Connected.'

— By Popular Science Team | June 14, 2025

Big And Small Underwater Faces — 3rd Place! Trips To The Antarctic Peninsula Always Yield Amazing Encounters With Leopard Seals (Hydrurga Leptonyx. Boldly Approaching Me And Baring His Teeth, This Individual Was Keen To Point Out That This Part Of Antarctica Was His Territory. This Picture Was Shot At Dusk, Resulting In The Rather Moody Atmosphere. Credit: Lars Von Ritter Zahony, Germany 🇩🇪, World Ocean’s Day

The striking eye of a humpback whale named Sweet Girl peers at the camera. Just four days later, she would be dead, hit by a speeding boat and one of the 20,000 whales killed by ship strikes each year. Photographer Rachel Moore’s captivating image (seen below) of Sweet Girl earned top honors at the 2025 United Nations World Oceans Day Photo Competition.

Top: Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us — Winner! This photo, taken in Mo’orea, French Polynesia in 2024, captures the eye of a humpback whale named Sweet Girl, just days before her tragic death. Four days after I captured this intimate moment, she was struck and killed by a fast-moving ship. Her death serves as a heartbreaking reminder of the 20,000 whales lost to ship strikes every year. We are using her story to advocate for stronger protections, petitioning for stricter speed laws around Tahiti and Mo’orea during whale season. I hope Sweet Girl’s legacy will spark real change to protect these incredible animals and prevent further senseless loss. Credit: Rachel Moore (USA 🇺🇸)

Bottom: Underwater Seascapes — Honorable Mention! With only orcas as their natural predators, leopard seals are Antarctica’s most versatile hunters, preying on everything from fish and cephalopods to penguins and other seals. Gentoo penguins are a favored menu item, and leopard seals can be observed patrolling the waters around their colonies. For this shot, I used a split image to capture both worlds: the gentoo penguin colony in the background with the leopard seal on the hunt in the foreground. Credit: Lars von Ritter Zahony (Germany 🇩🇪)

Now in its twelfth year, the competition coordinated in collaboration between the UN Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, DivePhotoGuide (DPG), Oceanic Global, and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO. Each year, thousands of underwater photographers submit images that judges award prizes for across four categories: Big and Small Underwater Faces, Underwater Seascapes, Above Water Seascapes, and Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us.

This year’s winning images include a curious leopard seal, a swarm of jellyfish, and a very grumpy looking Japanese warbonnet. Given our oceans’ perilous state, all competition participants were required to sign a charter of 14 commitments regarding ethics in photography.

Top: Above Water Seascapes – Winner! A serene lake cradled by arid dunes, where a gentle stream breathes life into the heart of Mother Earth’s creation: Captured from an airplane, this image reveals the powerful contrasts and hidden beauty where land and ocean meet, reminding us that the ocean is the source of all life and that everything in nature is deeply connected. The location is a remote stretch of coastline near Shark Bay, Western Australia. Credit: Leander Nardin (Austria 🇦🇹)

Bottom: Above Water Seascapes — 3rd Place! Paradise Harbour is one of the most beautiful places on the Antarctic Peninsula. When I visited, the sea was extremely calm, and I was lucky enough to witness a wonderfully clear reflection of the Suárez Glacier (aka Petzval Glacier) in the water. The only problem was the waves created by our speedboat, and the only way to capture the perfect reflection was to lie on the bottom of the boat while it moved towards the glacier. Credit: Andrey Nosik (Russia 🇷🇺)

Top: Underwater Seascapes — 3rd Place! “La Rapadura” is a natural hidden treasure on the northern coast of Tenerife, in the Spanish territory of the Canary Islands. Only discovered in 1996, it is one of the most astonishing underwater landscapes in the world, consistently ranking among the planet’s best dive sites. These towering columns of basalt are the result of volcanic processes that occurred between 500,000 and a million years ago. The formation was created when a basaltic lava flow reached the ocean, where, upon cooling and solidifying, it contracted, creating natural structures often compared to the pipes of church organs. Located in a region where marine life has been impacted by once common illegal fishing practices, this stunning natural monument has both geological and ecological value, and scientists and underwater photographers are advocating for its protection. (Model: Yolanda Garcia) Credit: Pedro Carrillo (Spain 🇪🇸)

Bottom: Underwater Seascapes — Winner! This year, I had the incredible opportunity to visit a jellyfish lake during a liveaboard trip around southern Raja Ampat, Indonesia. Being surrounded by millions of jellyfish, which have evolved to lose their stinging ability due to the absence of predators, was one of the most breathtaking experiences I’ve ever had. Credit: Dani Escayola (Spain 🇪🇸)

Top: Underwater Seascapes — 2nd Place! This shot captures a school of rays resting at a cleaning station in Mauritius, where strong currents once attracted them regularly. Some rays grew accustomed to divers, allowing close encounters like this. Sadly, after the severe bleaching that the reefs here suffered last year, such gatherings have become rare, and I fear I may not witness this again at the same spot. Credit: Gerald Rambert (Mauritius 🇲🇺)

Bottom: Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us — 3rd Place! Shot in Cuba’s Jardines de la Reina—a protected shark sanctuary—this image captures a Caribbean reef shark weaving through a group of silky sharks near the surface. Using a slow shutter and strobes as the shark pivoted sharply, the motion blurred into a wave-like arc across its head, lit by the golden hues of sunset. The abundance and behavior of sharks here is a living symbol of what protected oceans can look like. Credit: Steven Lopez (USA 🇺🇸)

Top: Above Water Seascapes — 2nd Place! Northern gannets (Morus bassanus) soar above the dramatic cliffs of Scotland’s Hermaness National Nature Reserve, their sleek white bodies and black-tipped wings slicing through the Shetland winds. These seabirds, the largest in the North Atlantic, are renowned for their striking plunge-dives, reaching speeds up to 100 kph (60 mph) as they hunt for fish beneath the waves. The cliffs of Hermaness provide ideal nesting sites, with updrafts aiding their take-offs and landings. Each spring, thousands return to this rugged coastline, forming one of the UK’s most significant gannet colonies. It was a major challenge to take photos at the edge of these cliffs at almost 200 meters (650 feet) with the winds up to 30 kph (20 mph). Credit: Nur Tucker (UK 🇬🇧/ Türkiye 🇹🇷)

Bottom: Above Water Seascapes — Honorable Mention! A South Atlantic swell breaks on the Dungeons Reef off the Cape Peninsula, South Africa, shot while photographing a big-wave surf session in October 2017. It’s the crescendoing sounds of these breaking swells that always amazes me. Credit: Ken Findlay (South Africa 🇿🇦)

Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us — Honorable Mention! Humpback whales in their thousands migrate along the Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia every year on the way to and from their calving grounds. In four seasons of swimming with them on the reef here, this is the only encounter I’ve had like this one. This pair of huge adult whales repeatedly spy-hopped alongside us, seeking to interact with and investigate us, leaving me completely breathless. The female in the foreground was much more confident than the male behind and would constantly make close approaches, whilst the male hung back a little, still interested but shy. After more than 10 years working with wildlife in the water, this was one of the best experiences of my life. Credit: Ollie Clarke (UK 🇬🇧)

Big and Small Underwater Faces — 2nd Place! On one of my many blackwater dives in Anilao, in the Philippines, my guide and I spotted something moving erratically at a depth of around 20 meters (65 feet), about 10 to 15 centimeters in size. We quickly realized that it was a rare blanket octopus (Tremoctopus sp.). As we approached, it opened up its beautiful blanket, revealing its multicolored mantle. I managed to take a few shots before it went on its way. I felt truly privileged to have captured this fascinating deep-sea cephalopod. Among its many unique characteristics, this species exhibits some of the most extreme sexual size-dimorphism in nature, with females weighing up to 40,000 times more than males. Credit: Giacomo Marchione (Italy 🇮🇹)

Big and Small Underwater Faces – Winner! This photo of a Japanese warbonnet (Chirolophis japonicus) was captured in the Sea of Japan, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southwest of Vladivostok, Russia. I found the ornate fish at a depth of about 30 meters (100 feet), under the stern of a shipwreck. This species does not appear to be afraid of divers—on the contrary, it seems to enjoy the attention—and it even tried to sit on the dome port of my camera. Credit: Andrey Nosik (Russia 🇷🇺)

Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us — 2nd Place! A juvenile pinnate batfish (Platax pinnatus) captured with a slow shutter speed, a snooted light, and deliberate camera panning to create a sense of motion and drama. Juvenile pinnate batfish are known for their striking black bodies outlined in vibrant orange—a coloration they lose within just a few months as they mature. I encountered this restless subject in the tropical waters of Indonesia’s Lembeh Strait. Capturing this image took patience and persistence over two dives, as these active young fish constantly dart for cover in crevices, making the shot particularly challenging. Credit: Luis Arpa (Spain 🇪🇸)

—United Nations 🇺🇳, World Oceans Day, WWW.UNWorldOceansDay.Org

[scarlettriot]

If you asked Kirishima he’d tell you that he never lies. It’s not manly! And yet the first time the two of you fucked he told three:

1. That he’d go nice and slow. This one wasn’t so much a lie as just a sheer lack of self control once he felt how perfect your walls clamped around him.

2. Just the tip. HA. First of all, if you believed this man was gonna stop at just his fat, mushroom tip, that’s on you. He’s giving you all his inches, all at once.

And 3. That he was good at keeping quiet. It’s one of the main reasons you agreed to let him bend you over the desk in his private office. But not only does he grunt and groan as he bullies himself in to the base, he’s doing so with thrusts that have the desk leaving scuff marks along the floor. Which, was actually pretty hot. But now the whole damn agency knows what your very important meeting with him was about.

[allwillbecomeclear]

Shark News!! Fossil of an ancient shark that swam in the age of dinosaurs solves centuries-long mystery

🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈

[stxrrstruckk]

i made a clay shark lol 🦈

🦈

[firechilde]

Adorable then. Adorable now.

[neurovarious]

im losing my mind over this absolute thing called a catshark (and alternatively a dogfish) what an animal

[a-clown-with-wings]

Dear Clown,

… give me front facing moon plz please I need to know what that face looks like for totally not drawing related reasons also is there any markings on the upper arm

Sent with distress

Muffiiee

Great White Shark. 🦈

Front reference for my fish man.

[clown-around-and-find-out]

[matoirsblog]

The tutururu shark

[moxxyandthekat]

And the crowd goes wild!!

Click the image for better quality

Original shirt 😔

[xtruss]

How Did This Shark Swim A Record-Breaking 4,000 Miles—A Journey Once Thought Impossible

Along Her Migration From Mozambique To Nigeria, The Eight-Foot-Long Female Would Have Encountered A Zone of Water Too Cold To Cross That Has Kept Africa's Bull Shark Populations Separated For 55,000 Years.

— By Brianna Randall | May 27, 2025

Bull Sharks tend to be Aggressive and live near Shorelines, Which has Earned them Fearsome Reputations. One Eight-Foot-Long Female recently logged a record breaking 4,000-Mile Journey. Photograph By Ryan Daly

When Turawa Hakeem caught a bull shark near Lagos, Nigeria last summer, the Ghanaian captain had no idea his crew was reeling a record winner onto his wooden fishing boat.

The eight-foot-long female had made an epic journey of at least 4,500 miles, the longest known movement of its species and the first time a bull shark was documented swimming through two oceans. The shark traveled from the Mozambique Channel in the Indian Ocean, swam around the southern tip of Africa, and then voyaged north through the Atlantic to Nigeria, according to research published this month in Ecology.

“Wow, I was surprised,” says Hakeem. “I didn’t know they could travel that far.”

When his crew began butchering the shark to sell its meat at a local market, Hakeem found a black finger-length cylinder inside its body that read: ‘Research: Reward if returned.’ Curious, Hakeem emailed the address. He reached Ryan Daly, the paper’s lead author and a shark ecologist at the Oceanographic Research Institute, a marine science and service facility that leads research projects in the western Indian Ocean. He implanted the acoustic transmitter in the bull shark in South Africa in 2021.

Daly was equally shocked—and very skeptical at first. “I thought it might be a scam,” Daly admits. “The chances of this happening are like one in a million.”

This lucky catch is providing new insights into how bull sharks move and shows how climate change may break down the environmental barriers that historically limited the migration of certain ocean animals.

How Did This Shark Cross Into A New Ocean?

Another study author and marine biologist at the Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research, Dunsin Abimbola Bolaji, confirmed Hakeem’s story.

In the year after she was tagged, the female bull shark was detected 567 times along the east coasts of South Africa and Mozambique by an array of 43 different underwater receivers.

Then she disappeared on March 25, 2022 and wasn’t seen again until Hakeem’s crew caught the shark on July 11 last year.

As part of their shark migration research, Daly and his colleagues also tagged and tracked 102 bull, blacktip, tiger and reef sharks in southern Africa. The longest recorded migration among these sharks was 1,400 miles, just one-third the distance traveled by the female bull shark that ended up near Lagos.

Bull sharks are coastal species, not known for long-distance travel in the open ocean. They prefer shallow waters where freshwater meets the sea and need water temperature warmer than 65°F.

During her voyage north, the female bull shark had to navigate the Benguela upwelling, one of the world’s largest cold-water currents that extends along the west coasts of South Africa and Namibia. This upwelling has formed a cold barrier separating Africa’s bull shark populations for at least the past 55,000 years.

Scientists think this bull shark bypassed the cold water by swimming out around the upwelling, which can extend up to 90 miles offshore. It’s also possible she rode pockets of warmer water around South Africa into the Atlantic Ocean during a Benguela Niño event.

This climate pattern is similar to the El Niño events that influence sea temperatures off the west coast of the Americas. Certain cold-water fish, like mackerel and sardines, have also been pushed north during Benguela Niño events.

As waters warm and upwellings shift due to climate change, Daly says the Benguela’s cold water barrier may break down more often, allowing ocean animals to move to different latitudes. These Niño-related water temperature changes can change the entire species makeup of certain marine areas, impacting everything in the food web from algae to plankton to sharks.

For bull sharks, however, more movement is likely a positive sign. “If it means more gene flow, then typically that’s a good thing,” Daly points out. “We need to adapt to survive in a changing world.”

Daly thinks that perhaps she was an immature shark who was “just exploring”. Females don’t reach sexual maturity until they are around 20 years old. Then they repeatedly return to the same estuary to reproduce. Until then, however, they may head out to “find their groove and the pattern that works for them,” Daly says.

It’s possible that this female’s extraordinary journey “might not be unusual at all”, says Rachel Graham, a shark biologist who was not involved in this study and executive director of MarAlliance, a conservation nonprofit based off the west coast of Africa.

Bull sharks may have always traveled farther than scientists realized, or perhaps this female was the “the black sheep in the family, the one who does something completely and utterly different to keep our gene pool robust,” Graham suggests.

The Threats Sharks Face

Despite her long journey, this female won’t pass on her genetics after befalling a common shark fate. Globally, sharks’ numbers have been halved since 1970. Overfishing drives 90 percent of the decline in sharks—but three-quarters of the estimated 100 million sharks that are caught each year are killed accidentally.

As stocks of other fish plummet globally, more people are turning to shark meat for protein—especially in countries in sub-Saharan Africa like Nigeria where people depend on fishing for their livelihoods.

“It had a one-way ticket there because fishery pressure is so extreme,” Daly says. “Sharks are running the gauntlet. In every country, they're facing different types of threats on top of climate change.”

Hakeem says his crew didn’t hook the tagged female bull shark on purpose. She took the bait meant for more lucrative grouper and snapper.

To ensure sharks—including future record breakers—survive, Graham says that scientists need to rely more on fishers like Hakeem to track sharks and to learn whether other marine species are making transoceanic journeys.

“Small-scale fishers are our allies in science,” Graham says. “They have PhDs of the sea.”

These sorts of novel partnerships may help scientists better understand how and where marine species are moving into new habitats.

Warming water may allow tropical species to expand their range polewards, which can relieve fishing pressure or allow them to spread to new homes. But simultaneously, climate change is also creating more intense cold events in their historic ranges, such as an extreme upwelling along the southeast coast of South Africa that killed individuals from 81 species in 2021, including sharks.

“It’s kind of like this bait and switch,” Daly says. “It gets warmer but then these intense upwelling events increase, so they might get trapped down there, at the end of their range for a tropical species and then die off.”

[scarlettriot]

WARNING: Body image discussion, fat phobic comments. Sexual comments mentioned.

Sorry I made Denki shitty in this one.

Minors and Ageless Blogs: Do Not Interact

“You see the new heroes that joined up for this mission?” Sero asked over a beer at the end of the shift, a smirk settling on his face as his eyes glance over to where a few of them had gathered at the bar.

There was a briefing for a massive joint mission set to take place in a few days and a few of them opted to go for drinks afterward.

“That one with the elemental quirk is pretty great.” Sero comments, his eyes finding the woman in question and wiggling his fingers in a little hello to her.

Everyone had fantastic skills perfectly suited for the task at hand. But everyone was also pretty easy on the eyes.

And Denki had an opinion on every single one of them, “Gods yes, she’s so cute and petite too.”

“I sorta think the woman with the teleportation quirk is pretty great. Her laugh was real pretty.” Kiri adds.

“Really? Her? Of everyone who joined up, you pick her!?” The energetic blonde scoffs, “her laugh is about the only thing she’s got going for her.”

Kiri was never a man to look down on someone for having a preference, the gods knew he sure did, but when that preference came with shaming others, then he had a problem.

“C’mon dude,” Sero tries smoothing it over before Kiri had a chance to say anything, “she’s exactly Red’s type. And her smile is super sweet too.”

Denki just insists on digging himself further into a hole though. “I know but come on, that’s a lot to deal with and there are WAY better options here.”

The beer can crumpled in Kiri’s hand.

“Shit— Red, he just drank too much—”

“Nah.” Bakugou cuts him off, “he deserves what’s coming to him.”

“I’m just being honest!” Denki laughs, not seeing any issue with his words, “you mean to tell me if both those women came onto you, you’d pick teleportation quirk over elemental?”

“Yup.” He isn’t in the mood for this little game but Denki seems to be the only one who isn’t picking up on that.

“Crazy man, you should—”

“Just say you can’t handle her.” Kiri says calmly.

“Excuse me?”

He leans forward and repeats, “just say you can’t handle her. Say you’re not man enough for it.” He words are nice and even as he gets a smirk tugging on the corner of his lips and he pushes himself up, “you don’t have the skills to satisfy a woman like her. Don’t have the dick? It’s alright, man.” He pats his shoulder, “some of us know how to please a woman no matter her size.”

He didn’t hear whatever Denki sputtered because he was way too busy walking up to the bar to buy that pretty woman her next drink.

[kawiifury]

Idk

[gremlin-boah]

Could we give mini Kieran a giant IKEA shark?

YES! @summerfactorfiction

lil kieran and his big IKEA shark.